Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone!

The livestream yesterday made it clear that all our venom skills are balanced around our 30 points shadow arts trait Venom Share. The new heal skill gets the 45 second cooldown because “every other venom has a 45 second cooldown” and because of our grandmaster trait Venom Share. Also the leech effect isn’t that strong combined with the base heal. The devs showed that it can pack some nice healing IF you are in full cleric but even they themselves mentioned “crazy thieves” with cleric gear, so I assume they aren’t intending people to try that out seeing they joke about it. Also all hits need to land for it to heal for that decent amount of HP versus cooldown.
45 second base cooldown, able to get interrupted, stacks remove on miss(blind), evade, invulnerable and blocks will make the healing pretty hard to utilise, again when you compare cooldowns with Hide in Shadows and Withdraw plus their extra effects on usage.

I’d like to point out that the venoms on their own aren’t really that great, and for them to be viable, you need atleast 4 traits (2 grandmaster and 2 master tiers). That’s 60 points down just to be able to use venoms and not completely suck with them.

Quick Venoms is MANDATORY when using venoms. The effects of the venoms wear off incredibly fast, and having to wait 40 seconds after 5 seconds of attacking and using venoms, is just wrong. Especially since they do not have that much of a gamebreaking effect. They do not help with survivability like our other utilities do. They have no stunbreak and no condition clearing.
A base cooldown of 30 seconds (24 when traited) would not be a bad idea at all and I do not consider that overpowered if you look at the current effects and the time it lingers.

Residual Venom isn’t mandatory BUT really really really really helpful. I think the trait on its own is lackluster for a grandmaster tier and I would like to see Quick Venoms absorbed into this one.

As for our 2 venom traits in Shadow Arts line, I don’t understand why the venoms are in the shadow arts line….Maybe the skill/trait team was out of ideas of where to put them? Anyway on to what I think about the traits

Leeching Venoms could use a little buff. It’s currently only rewarding people with 4 venoms. Taking it while having only 1 or 2 venoms isn’t going to do anything amazing, just like Assassin’s Reward which isn’t all that great as the 10 december patch leads us to believe.
I think this trait is fine as a master tier if they add Potent Venoms, the one that gives might on activation, into this one. Either Potent Venoms in this or a buff to the heal it gives, in my honest opinion.

Venom Share is strong when everybody stands near eachother and gets ready to kiss eachother and prepares for a grouphug session. In a serious TPvP match you will NEVER EVER get to use it on 3 or more people. They are far too spread out for that and have their own jobs to fulfill.
My suggestion is that Venom Share actually goes to the Adept tier!
Why? Because of the promised build diversity! If I would pick Shadow Arts line for my stealthing and see Venom Share in adept tier, I could still contribute to my team instead of selfishly go invisible like it is now. Plus it makes no sense to go all out in Shadow Arts for Venom Share since you almost pack no stealths when using a Venom support oriented build.

Jon Peters mentioned a LOT of “Ifs” in the twitch stream chat yesterday. IF everyone is close, IF everyone hits with their attacks, IF everyone times it correctly and the likes.
Maybe the current Thief community doesn’t know how to properly use a Thief Venom Share build, even after a year. Maybe the skill ceiling is that much higher than we thought it was. I do not know.

However with the changes made for 10 december I would really like some insight where the developers think the Thief is right now and actually what our role is!
Our burst is getting mediocre in serious PvP settings (WvW is basicly PvE) and I don’t think our sustained damage is all that scary considering how squishy we are in return to deal that sustained damage.
Also our survivability is getting lowered with the cuts into vigor and Assassin’s Reward getting the buff it needed but then upped into grandmaster tier, which is undeserved.

TL:DR
Please rework the venom traits. Please do not balance your skills around a 30 points trait, this forces you to take that trait to make it work as intended and please explain what the role of a Thief is currently.

Also, fellow Thieves, please share your thoughts

Venoms are already viable when you only take one or two for utility, they just need to be made worth building entirely around, giving thief some of the same utility he would have in a typical thief build.

I suggested this in the other thread, but the Venomshare trait needs to make venoms ground target (900 range) and shadow step you the area to share where you step to.

And somewhere they need to tweak a trait, or replace a trait with a venom trait, that would give stealth when a venom skill is used.

There, venoms fixed. The only alternative option IMO would be to have venoms on F2-F4 so every thief build can have them at their disposal, and move most of the venom traits in the power line to the trickery trait line, which would be a MAJOR overhaul.

Shadowstepshare would be cool, if it wouldnt get a silly long casttime, the appeal of venoms is that they are insteant, atleast to me. And a stealth on venom activation would be super cool.

Don’t take the power line venoms into trickery. Power buffs condition damage and our normal damage so I’d like to keep it in there, it has nice synergy. Having to go shadow arts and then trickery would demolish our DPS heavily :P

For our F skills, I still like the idea of having pockets to store stolen skills in. Much better than our current system of steal > use or throw away to steal again.

Mathematically speaking, taking Improvisation over Quick Venoms with at least 10 in Trickery gives a lesser and more flexible cooldown when running full venoms.

Viking Jorun.5413:

Mathematically speaking, taking Improvisation over Quick Venoms with at least 10 in Trickery gives a lesser and more flexible cooldown when running full venoms.

With Improvisation, every Steal gives you a 20% chance to recharge your venoms, right? I don’t see how this is an attractive proposition.

Oghier.7419:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Mathematically speaking, taking Improvisation over Quick Venoms with at least 10 in Trickery gives a lesser and more flexible cooldown when running full venoms.

With Improvisation, every Steal gives you a 20% chance to recharge your venoms, right? I don’t see how this is an attractive proposition.

If you’re only running venoms it’s a 100% chance..

Viking Jorun.5413:

Oghier.7419:

Viking Jorun.5413:

Mathematically speaking, taking Improvisation over Quick Venoms with at least 10 in Trickery gives a lesser and more flexible cooldown when running full venoms.

With Improvisation, every Steal gives you a 20% chance to recharge your venoms, right? I don’t see how this is an attractive proposition.

If you’re only running venoms it’s a 100% chance..

Not sure what you mean here – just slotted venoms for every utility and BV, and had the cooldown not reset on multiple steals.